Milwaukee Public Schools Research Project
Generously funded by The Joyce Foundation

Researchers

Dr. Chris Dede serves as the Principal Investigator/Project Director. As Principal Investigator, he has overall responsibility for the project. Dr. Dede is the Timothy E. Wirth Professor of Learning Technologies at Harvard's Graduate School of Education and is also the Chair of its Learning and Teaching Area. His work with schools includes service on the National Technology Advisory Boards for the Milwaukee and Cleveland districts. He was the Editor of the 1998 Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) Yearbook, Learning with Technology. His research includes a grant from the National Science Foundation to develop shared virtual environments with digitized museum artifacts to aid middle school students learning science. Dr. Dede recently served as a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Foundations of Educational and Psychological Assessment and a member of the U.S. Department of Education's Expert Panel on Technology. He is also on the International Steering Committee for the Second International Technology in Education Study spanning approximately thirty countries. He serves on the Advisory Boards of ThinkLink, FreshPond, bigchalk, and World Book.

Milli Pierce is the Director of The Principals' Center at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she is also a Lecturer in the Learning and Teaching department. During this project her role is to collaborate with Milwaukee Public Schools and the Harvard-Joyce team to assist in providing professional development services to MPS principals. By providing on line education as well as opportunties at the Harvard Graduate School of Education we hope to help principals meet the challenges involved in improving their schools.
email: principals@gse.harvard.edu

Dr. Glenn Kleiman is Vice President and Senior Research Scientist at Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC) and on the faculty of the Technology in Education Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. With a background in cognitive and developmental psychology (Ph.D. Stanford, 1977), he has been involved in technology in education since the "days of 8K PET computers", as a software designer, curriculum developer, author, instructor, workshop leader, and consultant. He has also taught at the University of Illinois, where he was a senior researcher at the National Center for the Study of Reading, at the University of Toronto, and at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. At EDC, Dr. Kleiman has directed several large scale projects funded by the National Science Foundation, the most recent of which produced the MathScape: Seeing and Thinking Mathematically middle school curriculum. His writings about technology in education span from an early book in the field, Brave New Schools: How Computers Can Change Education (Prentice Hall, 1984) to a recent article in the Harvard Education Letter, Myths and Realities about Technology in K-12 Schools (April, 2000). He has been the education chair for the Harvard/EDC Leadership and the New Technologies (LNT) summer institutes, and directed the development of the related LNT web site. He now directs EDC's Center for Online Professional Education and the EdTech Leaders Online program.

Kirsten Peterson is the Associate Project Director at the Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC) Center for Online Professional Education. The Center for Online Professional Education (COPE) at Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC) brings extensive experience and expertise in the area of innovative approaches to professional development to the Joyce project. COPE's role in the project is to work together with Harvard, MPS, and other partners to co-construct professional development initiatives that help MPS deal with teacher induction and retention issues. COPE's contribution to the project will be based on its national online professional development program, EdTech Leaders Online, which enables educational organizations to develop internal capacity for strengthening and expanding existing professional development programs with innovative online approaches.

back to top

Kathy Onarheim is the Director of School Technology Support within the Milwaukee Public School system. Kathy was one of the leads on the original conceptualization team and remains active in the visualization and support of the portal and its implementation by providing guidance and resources from the MPS Division of School Technology Support.

Elise Riepenhoff is the Technology Project Manager within the Milwaukee Public School system. Elise is the Project Manager for the development of Milwaukee Public Schools' Professional Support Portal. (PSP). As Project manager, she coordinates the work among the district departments of Human Resources, Leaderhip Services, Curriculum and Instruction, Professional Development, and Technology as well as representatives from local universities, principals, teachers, and teacher union representatives, to plan, design, pilot and launch over the course of the Joyce Project Grant, a portal site that will support teacher induction and retention. Through input from MPS and Community advisory groups, Elise is responsible to guide the development of the PSP and to coordinate the structure of Harvard's support with MPS. This effort is under the guidance of Harvard 's Graduate School of Education.

Liane Moody is a doctoral student in the Learning and Teaching program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE). Her research focuses on the use of data based decision making as part of reform efforts in urban schools and districts. Before coming to HGSE, Liane worked for the Boston Plan for Excellence, a local education foundation that has partnered with the Boston Public Schools (BPS). As a Technology Project Coordinator with the Boston Plan for Excellence, Liane was part of a design team that created FAST Track and MyBPS, desktop and intranet database tools that facilitate the use of data by teachers and school administrators in BPS. Liane completed her undergraduate work in Structural Engineering and Women's Studies at Princeton University.

David Eddy Spicer is a Research Associate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he is pursuing a doctoral degree in the Learning and Teaching area. His research focuses on communities of practice in professional learning. He also directs the new media initiatives in the Case Program at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He has designed and developed new forms of web-based and CD-ROM curriculum over the past eight years that integrate multimedia and hypertext. He has researched and written about technology integration in professional development and serves as the reviews editor for the journal Education, Communication and Information. He holds a Master's of Education in International Education from Boston University.

Kimberly Zern was a master's student in the Technology in Education program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) where she focused on educational software design, implementation, and evaluation, and the use of technology in informal educational settings. Before coming to HGSE Kimberly completed her undergraduate work in Mathematics and Computer Science at Ursinus College. During her undergraduate work she also held internships with SKF USA Inc in technical support, and Merck Research Labs in Online Course Design and Programming.

back to top

Adrienne DeWolfe was a graduate of the Technology in Education masters program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her academic interests include thoughtful integration of technology to support classroom curriculum, teacher professional development, curriculum design, and online learning. While at Harvard, Adrienne worked on the Harvard Technology and Ethics Project to develop high school curriculum and collaborative communities. Before coming to Harvard Adrienne taught elementary school for six years in Southern California where she was a leader in classroom technology integration.

Paula Stanziani was a Master's student in the TIE program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she focused on the psychology of computing. Before coming to the school, she ran her own technical writing company Success Strategies (now DocWhiz) and wrote technical documentation for companies in the Boston area.

Geordie Dukas graduated with a Masters degree from the Harvard Graduate School
of Education. After graduation from Harvard College, he ran a software
company and then held the position of Director of Program Development at
Chesapeake Bay Academy, an alternative school in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

back to home